General misclassification of multi-family

[VCGIjadams]

I checked 3 towns (Charlotte, Addison, and Ferrisburg) and it appears fields 3FD / 4FD were misclassified as 'Allowed/Conditional' instead of 'Public Hearing Required'. I suspect other may be misclassified as well.

This is understandable, as the NZA definition of an “Allowed/Conditional” use means that it is allowed without a public hearing - while it means the opposite in Vermont (See 24 VSA § 4414. Zoning; permissible types of regulations 3) Conditional Uses are "allowed only by approval of the appropriate municipal panel"

[thebestyoshibird]

Hi, John!

Thank you so much for all the helpful feedback! This is a great opportunity to clarify what we need to make revisions to the data and how we can best respond to feedback.

Can you clarify the following:

(1) Are the errors you’re reporting coming from local Planners? If so, are they familiar with the methodology and saying that public hearings ARE required? If not, do they possibly mean that conditional use review is required (meaning that we’d need to check that the approval by the municipal panel is also subject to a public hearing)? (2) Is it possible to confirm that the errors being reported are errors in our data collection for the bylaws with the corresponding approval date? Or is it possible that the errors reflect changes to the bylaws that took effect AFTER we did our analysis? (3) Would it make sense to just change the value “Allowed/Conditional” to “Allowed Without Public Hearing” for all the districts?

I think we will need to collect this information from people reporting errors: Name, Contact Information (for follow-up questions like the ones above), Effective Date of Bylaws in Conflict with the Atlas Data, Type of Error (e.g., Miscategorized Value or Updated Bylaws), Jurisdiction, District, Rule, Current Value, Corrected Value.

We can discuss this at the upcoming Steering Committee meeting for the benefit of my successor! At this point, for the errors you forwarded, can you let me know the information above so we can make corrections in the right way? If bylaws have changed, for example, I’d archive the old jurisdiction data (versus replacing the data if we’ve just got an error and the bylaws haven’t changed).

Thanks!

Yoshi M. Bird, JD University of Vermont Complex Systems & Data Science

Tel: (413) 326-6138 Email: @.***

On Sep 13, 2024, at 10:33 AM, John E. Adams (VCGI) @.***> wrote:

I checked 3 towns (Charlotte, Addison, and Ferrisburg) and it appears fields 3FD / 4FD were misclassified as 'Allowed/Conditional' instead of 'Public Hearing Required'. I suspect other may be misclassified as well.

This is understandable, as the NZA definition of an “Allowed/Conditional” use means that it is allowed without a public hearing - while it means the opposite in Vermont (See 24 VSA § 4414. Zoning; permissible types of regulationshttps://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/24/117/04414 3) Conditional Uses are "allowed only by approval of the appropriate municipal panel"

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[VCGIjadams]

Hi @thebestyoshibird -

(1) Are the errors you’re reporting coming from local Planners? If so, are they familiar with the methodology and saying that public hearings ARE required? If not, do they possibly mean that conditional use review is required (meaning that we’d need to check that the approval by the municipal panel is also subject to a public hearing)?

• They are not coming from local planners, I checked because it seemed unlikely that these towns would allow multifamily without conditional use review (which requires a public hearing.)

(2) Is it possible to confirm that the errors being reported are errors in our data collection for the bylaws with the corresponding approval date? Or is it possible that the errors reflect changes to the bylaws that took effect AFTER we did our analysis?

• Doesn't look like there was any bylaw change. Charlotte did have an amendment in 2023, but it looks like it was only related to cannabis, and that those were the bylaws reviewed for the atlas. (Generally it looks like the BYLAW_EFF date field, where it is filled out, is the date of review/download rather than the date of bylaw adoption - is that correct?)

(3) Would it make sense to just change the value “Allowed/Conditional” to “Allowed Without Public Hearing” for all the districts?

• Changing 'Allowed/Conditional' would go a long way in alleviating confusion. Typically these are referred to as 'permitted' uses in VT. Probably good to specify in a data standard / taken up by steering committee. For now I have a script that changes the 'Allowed/Conditional' to 'Permitted' in the map pop-up, but it would be a good idea to change it in the data.

CC @kefortney